The road to Emmaus

Today we had our monthly children's church; a 1/2 hour service for pre-schoolers and their parents or carers. I looked at last Sunday's lectionary, and thought we should have a stab at the road to Emmaus. it's a nice visual story which children of this age can identify with. Often we use a technique we've called the 'Bible Storyboard' where we draw the story on a large (A1) piece of paper as we tell it, paraphrased from the biblical original. Sometimes we use a Godly Play story, with the appropriate set of toys. Sometimes we act out a story with props and accessories. Today I decided to look for a video, and I was not disappointed. We watched this video a total of three times, because they loved it so much:

We had a bit of discussion about whether Jesus was actually an elephant, but the children and adults all loved it.

At the end of our time of worship, we then all set about creating our own road to Emmaus scene using biscuits, ready made icing, gravel (coloured sprinkles) for the road, and jelly babies for the characters in the story. These went down well in more ways than one!

The most important thing about a service like this is that the children have fun in church. If they do that, they are more likely to remember the stories we tell them, and more likely to want to come back. Our numbers are small at children's church, but the children who come keep coming back.

So thanks to the people who put together the video we used - I'll be subscribing to their channel in case there's anything else we can use.